


In Our Bedroom, After the War

by resplendissante



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-09
Updated: 2011-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resplendissante/pseuds/resplendissante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy's ex-wife dies, and her secrets pull him back to Georgia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on LJ a couple of summers ago, and was then required by unhappy circumstance to lock my journal against cyberstalking! Therefore, I am posting this now simply because I think it is pretty good for something I wrote in between dataset massaging in grad school. Please note that it employs many original characters, who I can't promise are not annoying (although in my defense I think they are okay, but everyone who writes original characters in fanfic thinks that, so), but mostly it is just about McCoy and Kirk and my neverending need to see them be as domestic as possible.

_One._

 _All the living are dead, and the dead are all living  
The war is over and we are beginning_  
Stars, In Our Bedroom After the War

The in-room computer chimes near the end of McCoy’s pharmacology exam, when he’s checking his answers, making sure the test PADD hasn’t translated his carefully-cultivated doctor’s scrawl into computer-code nonsense. The technology is good, but McCoy believes, with medicine as with everything else, that nothing can substitute for the human eye. He’s thinking about the bottle of bourbon waiting for him tomorrow afternoon, when his finals are finished and there’s a brief respite before summer classes start up. A week to spend drunk and alone, or, more likely, with Jim harassing him into bar-hopping or some damn thing.

It’s a good thing he’s nearly done, because the invigilator comes up, looking annoyed at the interruption, and informs him that he’s received a high-priority call that he can take in the department office, if he has completed his work. And although McCoy could probably stare down this barely-pubescent pup of a graduate student without too much effort, he simply rolls his eyes, hands his exam to the disapproving twenty-four-year-old, and leaves, wondering what the hell Kirk’s gotten himself into during finals, of all things.

It’s not Kirk on the vidscreen, though, when the administrative assistant leaves him to the privacy of the department head’s unoccupied office. It’s a woman, round-faced and stressed out, hair frizzing wildly in what he can only assume is high humidity. She’s biting her nails.

“Jack,” he says, brow furrowing. “What the hell?”

“Len,” she says, rubbing one of the dark circles under her eyes and smudging her mascara darkly, giving herself the air of a depressed panda. “I’m gonna tell you something, and you’re going to have to be quiet or I’m gonna lose it.” At Leonard’s nod, she says, “Jos died on Saturday.”

He hasn’t even thought of Jocelyn in so long that it’s a direct hit, straight into his chest, sucking out his air in a quiet, harsh exhalation. “What? What happened? Jesus, Jack.”

“She had an – I don’t know exactly what it was. Bleeding, like, in her brain.”

“An aneurysm,” McCoy fills in, starting to breathe again, thinking about how fucking awful and how fucking karmic the whole thing is.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, blinking hard. “But – you know, Len, I never agreed with what she did to you. I thought, you know, you could probably have worked it out. Or at least stayed in _Savannah_. I didn’t know, I swear – I’ve been off-planet, you know, the genocide on Tau IV, working with an NGO – and – “ She stops, laughs her breathy, girlish laugh, the one that fooled people into thinking there was no way this woman could possibly walk through minefields handing out rations and documenting cruelties. “I’m gettin’ ahead of myself. Shit. Len, listen. You know I’d’ve called you if I knew, but there’s somethin’ you need t’know – listen to me, talkin’ like a hick again.”

“Take a deep breath,” he advises, pity taking root deep in his stomach. Jack and Jos hadn’t been close – polar opposites, in fact, Jos the hometown girl-hero, youngest district attorney appointed in a hundred years, and Jack, who hated the South and hated the states and left Savannah for college in London at seventeen, returning to Georgia only at Christmas and a week every summer under threat of a family visit to England. But for all that, Jos was the only one allowed to bitch about Jack, although Jack hadn’t had quite that same loyalty, particularly as the divorce drew to a close and the family drew together. Apparently even emotionally-repressed assholes needed drinking buddies, although Leonard was pretty sure he was the exception to the bonds of sisterhood.

Jack does take her deep breath, but it seems to bring her closer to sobbing than anything. She takes a long few minutes to scrub the tears from her eyes, her little hiccups worse than real silence. “Len,” she says finally, voice shaking, “I don’t know how to say this, and I’m fuckin’ pissed that I have to, but Josie was pregnant when you left, and her will’s pretty clear that it’s yours. She’s yours – the baby. I, uh, the lawyers had this genetic scan done using your old medical records, and – “

She keeps talking, but it’s Leonard’s turn to hyperventilate. “ _What the fuck_ ,” he says, as the words hit him, and he’s practically blacking out, leaning forward, feeling the blood rushing to his face and his neck and anywhere but his brain.

“I’m sorry.” When he can stand to look up again, Jack’s face is so pale he wonders if she’s slept at all. “I mean it, I can’t believe she did it. There’s a letter, but it’s the usual Josie bullshit – too pissed at first, then she wanted to do it alone, then it was too long and she couldn’t, she was gonna tell you when you graduated, blah, blah.” Jack’s dropping Ts all over the place, words quick and strained. She seems to understand that McCoy needs her to keep talking, though, because she continues. “I guess it’s not my fault, but she’s my fuckin’ sister, Len, and I tell you what, I’d’ve strangled her myself if I knew. I only found out when I came down planetside on Monday – got the call on Saturday night. I’m the executor, of _course_. Bitch asked me when I was drunk a couple Christmases ago – the one when Dad asked me if I was ever gonna make any money at this emergency response thing, because Josie was pullin’ in six figures already, and – “

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he manages, trying to sit up again.

“Shit. I’m sorry.” Jack pulls herself back to the present, but all her words seem to have dried up. “I’m a goddamn mess. But you gotta get down here, Len.”

He nods numbly. And then it occurs to him to ask: “What’s her name?”

Jack gives him a watery, sarcastic smile. “Joanna.”

And he has to huff out the least humourous laugh in his life. “Of fucking course,” he mutters. “Has to be, in your fuckin’ family.” Josie and Jack, daughters of John and Jeri. Goddamn cutesy bullshit, like the pink cross-stitched _Home is where the heart is_ welcome mat Jos’s aunt gave them for their first anniversary. He remembers Jos putting it out on the curb for the recycling truck, brutally unsentimental, and loving her a little more for that.

Jack can’t seem to hold her smile. “Just get your ass down here, Len. I bet I know less about kids than you do, and that’s gotta be the saddest thing in this little girl’s life right about now.”

McCoy rubs at his face. “Not the saddest,” he says, and tells her that he’ll be down in Savannah within a day.

*

 _Fuck me_ , he thinks, over and over, while arranging emergency academic leave and shouting at a travel agent and throwing up in the head on the shuttle to Atlanta. _Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me_. Head between his knees while they’re landing, walking through the terminal, waiting for his luggage, just fuck me, like his head’s stuck on repeat, skipping like one of those annoying techno songs harkening back to the bad old days of non-digital music.

And, when he passes the Savannah city limits in a fresh-smelling rental car, windows down so he can really smell the city air, the fresh-cut grass: _Fuck you, Jos._

*

Early that morning, Jack meets him on the porch of his old home in the Old City, the part of Savannah that’s been restored and rebuilt thirty times since the Civil War, houses retrofitted with new technology, yards updated with greener grass-seed and longer-lasting perennials. He’s sure that every single colonial-style home has been rebuilt from the ground up more than once, but they are beautiful in a stately old way, far removed from the aggressive modernity of the Starfleet Academy and San Francisco. That’s why he and Jos had bought here, when the market was a buyer’s market; the price was right for a new doctor, and the area was suitable for Josie’s austere, slightly snobbish taste.

Jack’s wearing some kind of alien-style wrap around her shoulders; its colours shift subtly every so often, shimmering in the heat. She’s cleaned up a little, hair pulled out of her face, but he doesn’t think she’s slept in days, by the way she sways when he leans in to hug her.

She kisses his cheek. “Hey, Lenny, nice to see you,” she says softly. “Wish I coulda just crashed your dorm room in the middle of the night.”

“Fortunately, I’ve made new friends who have the same mi casa mentality,” he says dryly, and they smile fearfully at one another, not sure what the hell they’re doing.

“Do you, uh. I mean, of course you want to meet her. She’s finally sleeping, but – damn, Len, she’s gorgeous. I mean, it’s you and my sister, so of course she is, but – “

McCoy nods, shouldering his bag, and they spend a moment where Jack fights him for it, stubbornly Southern despite it all, until he lets her take it. “Very gentlemanly,” he tells her grumpily, and they glare at each other for a moment, while Jack leads him up the familiar stairs. They pad as quietly as they can in their shoes (something Jos, when alive, would never have allowed) toward what had been the guest room in better times.

Jack edges the door open, apparently aware of the way it squeals if you open it too fast. It’s a nursery now, decorated in bright pink and lavender, very trendy, with framed black-and-white photos of animals on the walls – very Jocelyn Willis-McCoy, not a kitten to be seen, just giraffes and a baby elephant and a large, shaggy dog on a beach.

He steps in after Jack, suddenly apprehensive, as if this might just be a nasty joke, Jocelyn waiting behind the overstuffed rocking chair ready to pounce. Paranoid, he tells himself, and his feet bring him to the crib.

There she is. His heart and his head are in agreement that this is the most fucked-up thing he’s ever had to do, and that includes tracing the outbreak of Tellurian genital shingles from a visiting scholar to James Kirk to a web of no fewer than eighty-seven cadets (though Jim only copped to twelve of them).

“Damn,” he breathes, looking down at the pink little face, the tiny fingers curled up against the soft fleece blanket. She – his daughter, someone he _made_ – is impossibly small, with dark hair already a soft fuzz on her head. Her nose wrinkles, and Jack’s pulling him bodily out of the room, closing the door with the gentlest touch possible, grimacing apologetically.

“She just went to sleep. She cried _all night_ , Len. All night. Mom went home when she dropped off at, like, midnight, and she woke up an hour later and you do not want to wake her up again. But.” Jack smiles. “Isn’t she cute as a button?”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” McCoy says, and barely makes it to the bathroom sink before he does.

*

 _You have four new messages. First new message, 2247h_ :

“Bones! It’s Jim. Where the hell are you, man? We’re celebrating the end of finals! I know your last one’s actually tomorrow, but you’re gonna ace it, and you think better hungover anyway. Come on out once you’re done cramming in the library like an undergrad. Kirk out!”

 _Second new message, 0233h_ :

“Booones. Dude. I’m so drunk, man, and you’re not here, and, like, what the fuck. Come hang out with me; Gaila picked up this Andorian guy – maybe a chick, I don’t know – and I’m bored. Where are you? Kirk fucking out.”

 _Third new message, 0914h_ :

“McCoy, man, it’s Kirk. Dude, I just went by your room, and you weren’t there. Your exam’s at eleven hundred hours, Bones, I hope you’re just holed up somewhere studying. Call me, okay? If you’re just having pre-exam jitters, remember what you told me about how everyone here is a neophyte who couldn’t find the pancreas with a map and a flashlight. Or whatever. You’re gonna ace it, man. – Hey, I thought you just had to take advanced anatomy because the asshole instructor wouldn’t waive it for you.”

 _Fourth new message, 1420h_ :

“Bones, where the fuck are you? I waited outside your exam and the guy said you didn’t even go. Are you okay? Did you die? If you did, _call me_. Christ, I’m going to inject you with one of those tracking chips. Obviously, this is James Kirk, your stalker. Man, I’m worried about you like I’m your girlfriend over here. Wait, did you actually get laid? Is that what this is? Oh my god. Call me, okay?”

 _End of messages. To replay these messages from the beginning, press one. To transcribe these messages to your personal messaging communicator, press six. To delete these messages, press zero._

*

Jos’s mother shows up the next day (having called twelve times the previous day to check in, but it’s finals at the U as well, and she has an eerie sixth sense about when Leonard can deal with a crowd) with a plastic container full of cornbread, a bag full of baby supplies, and a book called _Your Newborn and You_. She puts these on the floor near the door of the nursery and makes her way to where he’s sitting with Joanna.

She’s wearing an oversized sweater with yorkies embroidered across the hem. “Leonard,” Jeri says, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek.

“Hello, Jeri,” he says tiredly. Apparently his daughter is nocturnal, because she was quiet as a kitten all day, mewling a little bit for food and fresh diapers and not much else, but through the night she screamed at the top of her lungs for hours, and all the rocking and walking and swaddling and pleading in the world hadn’t persuaded her that silence was golden. Still, with her resting her little baby hand on his big ungainly one, suckling contentedly at a bottle of formula, he can’t bring himself to complain out loud. Especially not to Jos’s mother, who has never really forgiven him for letting her daughter divorce him.

She sits in the chair opposite the rocker. “I was going to call you,” she says awkwardly, suddenly, “but Josie was so determined that she was gonna do it on her own. You know how she was about gettin’ her own way.”

“She bullied you out of it,” Leonard divines, and Jeri shrugs in agreement. She’s young, for a grandmother, only in her sixties, with hair dyed subtle caramel and her skin tanned from gardening. The Willis garden, in the trendier, newer, and younger Kensington quarter of Savannah, had been featured in several state magazines over the years. Jeri, a horticulturalist at the U, and her husband, a contractor, were almost prouder of that damn patch of grass than they were of their kids.

Jeri sighs, reaching over to touch one of the little wrists. “She was strong-willed. Much like a handsome young doctor I know.” She shoots him a look. “The two of you, I swear, Len.” An oft-repeated, if ill-defined, sentiment. “So what do you think you’re gonna do?”

“I gotta get back to the Academy in another three weeks,” he says, “but I think I can get myself into the family-unit housing, since graduation’s not too long from now.” Really fucking convenient to die in the summer, Jos. “I can take a lighter courseload this summer, and I’ll – “

He breaks off when he notices that Jeri’s looking at him appraisingly. “So you’re going to take her with you,” she says, tilting her head, as though taking in the image of him and the baby together.

“What are you talking about? Of fucking _course_ I’m – “ He has to lower his voice to a hiss when Joanna starts to fuss, noises of resentment reminding him that this is her dinnertime and there are _rules_. “Of course I am, you damned witch. And I’ll take you straight to goddamn court if you think you’re gettin’ around the will that easy.”

She smiles at him, totally unoffended. “I was just makin’ sure. You didn’t even leave a forwardin’ address when you left, Leonard. I half-expected you to show up on my doorstep with a baby basket and an excuse today.” Before he can really go apoplectic, she waves him down. “I’m proud of you, dumbass. The way Jos handled this – well, you’re not wrong to be angry. But I gotta say, you and little Jo there look pretty damn good.”

He’s not going to tell the woman’s mother that he’s been entertaining thoughts of resurrecting Jocelyn just to throttle her to death again. “Guess that’s just the way things work out,” he says gruffly, and she laughs.

“Baby, you don’t even know.” She falls silent when he doesn’t respond, watching him feeding her grandbaby in the rocking chair that he realizes with a start used to sit in her own living room. He wonders if she fed Jocelyn in this chair, and his stomach twinges with regret, the kind that closes your throat up. But feeding Joanna when she’s hungry enough to eat for a while is soothing, just the scent and warmth of milk and a soft cloth over his shoulder. “Len,” Jeri says eventually, “I wanted to talk to you about somethin’ else.”

“Hmm?” Leonard’s been watching Joanna for too long. Turning into some kind of idiot. That’s what having children does to people; no surprise he’s no different.

“You could stay,” Jeri says simply. “You could stay in Savannah. Me an’ John would love to have the baby close, and – there ain’t nothin’ stoppin’ you, is all I’m sayin’.” No divorce agreement hanging over his head. No Jocelyn Willis turning corners in his head, no shouting, no discord. Just a beautiful city in a beautiful home, with the porch he used to love sitting on that wraps all the way around the house. A practice he could probably rejoin. His own family a few hours away, horses and big dogs and acres of land. It’s not a stupid idea.

And yet – is it really _his_ home, this house, this place, now? He hasn’t thought about the carpet on his feet in months. He’d barely thought about Jos in the months before her death, too consumed with keeping Jim Kirk from a premature death and learning as much as possible about alien anatomy to really (if he’s honest) brood about the past. His mother calls him every Sunday to hear about Starfleet, and he thinks that maybe they’re both okay with that.

“I don’t think,” he starts, and has to clear his throat and put the bottle on the little table between the chairs, pulling Joanna carefully onto his shoulder and patting her back. “I think I have to go back,” he says finally, tilting his head at her in a sort of apology.

“Of course you do, son,” she says after examining him for a moment. “I guess you went and found yourself a new kind of life. Let me ask you one thing, though.”

“What?” he asks warily, prepared for the hard sell.

Jeri smiles that dangerous woman-smile he’s seen on three Willises since coming into contact with the species. “When you come back for Christmas, you gonna be bringin’ a lady friend or what?”

*

“Kirk here.”

“Jim. I got your messages, you goddamn – “

“ _Bones_ , oh my God, I thought you were dead, man! I tried to bribe your advisor and she just gave me this _look_ and said you were _indisposed_ and I thought you’d finally gone off the deep end and killed your anatomy instructor and Starfleet had to hide the body.” Kirk sounds breathless. “Where _are_ you?”

“I’m in Georgia, you idiot.” McCoy sighs. “There was kind of a – “

“You went back home,” Jim interrupts wonderingly. “I thought you said that you were practically exiled from Georgia, dude.”

“Jim, would you listen for once in your life?” Jim falls silent. “My ex had an aneurysm last Saturday. Died pretty quick, I guess. Her sister called me – “

“Jesus, Bones.” But Kirk’s brain works too fast, and he’s already saying, “But – “ in that tone of voice that reminds McCoy strongly of a confused puppy cocking its head.

“Jim, listen for a minute, goddammit. Jos was, uh.” Suddenly McCoy’s finding this hard to explain. “Jos was pregnant when I left. She had the kid a couple of months ago. It’s – she’s, her name’s Joanna – she’s mine. So.”

Jim is quiet for a second. “So, you have a – “

“Yes, Jim. I have a baby.”

“And she’s definitely – “

“ _Yes_ , Jim, she’s definitely mine.” McCoy’s voice may be sliding back into that comfortable irritation Jim so expertly brings out in him. “They _do_ have genetic scans in Georgia.”

Jim whistles. “Damn. But I thought you hadn’t had done it for like a year before – “

McCoy sighs. “Once, Jim. Before we signed the papers.” McCoy tries not to think about that too much, but clearly they hadn’t been thinking about birth control, and damn, if he’s not the stupidest doctor in the universe, he’s probably not that far down the list.

“Well, leaving aside the fact that you had super-hot hate sex with your ex and never told me – “

“ – Yeah, let’s – “

“ – you’re always telling me that once is all it takes.”

“Which I think you can take my word for now,” McCoy tells him severely.

“Well,” Jim says again, thoughtfully this time, “I’m done my exams. I’m gonna come help.” Before McCoy can even begin to process the horror this evokes in him, Jim continues, “Kids love me, and girls _love_ me – you did say _Joanna, right? – and you sound like you need a stiff drink. You need me, Bones. Admit it.”_

 _McCoy tries to deflect him. “No, Jim. No. I don’t need you to come down. I’m comin’ back up in a couple weeks, and – “_

 _“Send me your address, okay?”_

 _And the line goes dead._

 _  
_Fuck me._   
_

*

It’s two in the morning, and Joanna can’t sleep without being rocked tonight, so that’s what he’s doing – rocking her in the chair that still smells like Jos’s perfume, while Jack sleeps in the master bedroom. She’s his kid, and while he’d probably trust Jack with his life, she’s started talking about seeing things at the edges of her vision, and he’s not entirely sure that he wants her holding Joanna until she’s had a solid ten hours of sleep. The lampshade has cut-outs in it, stars and moons, and the shadows on the walls flicker every so often, reminding him that this house has the oldest wiring on the block. Jos was always at him to get it updated; clearly she never got around to it in the last eleven months of her life.

Normally, this is the time of evening when Kirk would show up with some cheap beer and talk his head off about command tactics until he passed out. He wishes, briefly, for that respite, but the new responsibility in his arms vetoes it. On principle.

And God, God, God – he thinks about Josie, all that bright, sharp, demanding intelligence, the dark shiny hair, the unflatteringly flattering grandpa sweaters she’d insisted on wearing all through her clerkship at the Court of Appeals. The way she’d lose all her hair elastics and resort to his good pens to keep her hair out of her face. The way she obsessed over moisturizers and toners and cleansers and God fucking knew what else, all those bottles lined up by size on the dresser they shared (80-20). How she’d kiss him on the mouth when he woke up late, even before he’d brushed his teeth, and pull him into the shower with her after he had.

Joanna stirs on his shoulder, feeling too light to be two months old. She makes these small, discontented noises sometimes, and he has to move a hand to her back, gently coaxing her into serenity again. She curls a hand into the hair beside his ear, and he closes his eyes in grief and joy and terror.

She won’t remember her mother. Not that there haven’t been days when McCoy’s wanted to forget all about the woman. Her talent for cutting him right down to the quick with a few choice words, her talent for holding grudges for years over the most trivial bullshit imaginable, the way she covered emotional insecurity with hostility.

But a girl needs a mama who can tell her how to deal with the bitchy girls at school, someone who can tell her what she’s not allowed to wear and when she’s allowed to date. These are all things McCoy sees himself failing at, in the future, producing a frumpy, slutty, unpopular little gremlin.

Or, Jesus. She could turn out to be like Jim Kirk, all terrifying brains and harebrained stunts and cheerful promiscuity. His stomach sinks at the prospect of raising two Jim Kirks. Please, God, wasn’t the one enough?

He doesn’t know girls, not to raise one. He barely knows babies, from his pediatric rotation at Savannah Grace, where he specialized in emergency surgery and therefore only knows all the terrible, depressing things that can go wrong with tiny organs and limbs and eyes. Thinking about that – about laser scalpels anywhere near this perfect, blushy pink skin – makes him swallow hard.

As if she can hear the direction of McCoy’s half-desperate thoughts, Joanna starts to whine, her face scrunching up in the particular unhappy way that also happens to make McCoy’s stomach fold like an accordion. “Hey,” he murmurs, pitching his voice low, soothing, and releasing the tension in his legs so that the chair starts rocking again. Her little voice starts hiccupping. “Hey, Joey, you hush now. Come on, baby, you’re fine.”

They rock together, his voice hitting a nonsense cadence and Joanna eventually going silent again in his arms, until he’s half asleep. She smells like baby powder and milk formula and something he can’t quite identify, maybe a little of the hospital way he smells most of the time.

McCoy breathes out near her face, and thinks she giggles a little when it tickles her ear, even though babies don’t giggle at two months. “What the hell are we gonna do, babygirl,” he says, and because she’s two months old and probably less neurotic than he is, she doesn’t answer.

*

Jim Kirk meets Jack Willis before McCoy can stop him. The problem is that when you’ve got a baby, you can’t rush down the stairs to stop your two worlds from crashing together. Instead, you have to reswaddle Joanna, who has been fussy and scrunchy-faced all morning, and pick her up carefully, and walk down the stairs like a normal person, overhearing the inevitable all the while.

“Hello,” Jim says downstairs; sounds like it’s accompanied by his charming white smile. “I’m crashing the baby party. You must be – um.”

“I’m Jack,” Jack tells him, amused. “The hostess. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Bones’s best friend,” Jim says, apparently hurt that the conversation has not revolved around him for the last few days. “Jim Kirk. We go way back. He threw up on me.”

“Whatever. He threw up on me like five years ago,” Jack retorts. She pauses. “Did you just call him Bones?”

“Jim, what the hell are you doing here?” McCoy interrupts, before this conversation can go even further downhill. “I thought I told you to – “

“You tried, but I’m a really bad listener,” Jim explains, dropping his backpack near the shoe rack. “Is that her? Come here, Bones, I’ve gotta see this for myself.” And because McCoy’s never been able to resist Jim for long in this mood, he just gives up and walks forward. “Oh, my God, Bones. She looks like you. Look at those eyes. And also – isn’t she kind of like a burrito?”

“Swaddling makes babies feel secure,” McCoy tells him, rolling his eyes.

“Huh,” Jim says, absorbing this. One thing that is true is that Jim Kirk rarely finds information he can’t store away for later use. “I can’t believe you have a kid. I mean, it’s kind of crazy.” He reaches out to touch her hand, and Joanna grabs it.

Leonard rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Jim, it was kind of a fucking surprise for me, too.”

Jim gives him a look. “Don’t swear in front of her, Bones. Jeez. She’s gonna grow up with your mouth if you’re not careful.”

Jack snorts. “Well, come on in. We’ve got lots of room, and a funeral to plan. I assume you don’t mind being put to use, since you’re here and all.”

It’s McCoy’s turn to snort. “If you can _find_ a use for him, Starfleet would probably give you a commendation.”

Jack raises her eyes skyward, dramatically. “Just what I’ve always wanted; a commendation from _the man_. Maybe they can find me some red pajamas, too.” She pulls her cardigan closer around herself. “Hope you don’t mind sleeping on the bad couch, Jim Kirk. Len’s got the good one, when he actually gets some sleep, and I’m in the bedroom upstairs.”

“I’ve slept _lots_ of worse places,” Jim tells her cheerfully.

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Jack gives McCoy a look like, _Aw, your best friend is a child._ “So, Jim from Starfleet, how do you feel about cooking?”

*

Jack’s got Jim chopping vegetables in no time, while McCoy puts Joanna down for what he hopes will be a long nap. When he pads back downstairs in his sweatpants and Starfleet Med t-shirt, he finds them chatting away – and, by the way they fall guiltily silent when he walks into the kitchen, probably about him. God, he hates it when people chat about him.

“So, Len,” Jack says, “the reading of the will’s gonna be tomorrow morning. And Mom’s thinkin’ we’d have the wake here on Saturday, since Josie didn’t want a funeral at Elliot and Sons and she hated churches. So we’re just gonna wing it.”

McCoy rubs his eyes. “Great. Wake me up when everything’s ready.” Leaning against the marble countertop, the adobe-style tiling cool on his feet, he steals a few slices of cucumber from Jim’s chopping board.

Jack gives him a look that is not unkind. “Yeah, right, sunshine. Mom’s drivin’ over as we speak, and Dad’s comin’ by after work – shit, I have to stop coming here. I’m talking like a damn Southerner again.” She sighs loudly, stirring something in a pot. “So your job is to keep Mom away from the kitchen so we don’t end up in some godawful mass poisoning.” She points at him with a spatula. “And when Daddy gets here, you three are gonna go out and find yourselves somethin’ – some _thing_ – you can wear to a damn wake, because Jim here just figured he could borrow something of yours, and Dad threw out his last suit when he started consulting and working from home, and I know _you_ only brought sweatpants and jeans and those ugly ratty old t-shirts.”

“Bitch,” Leonard says, not for the first time struck with the absurdity of arranging his ex-wife’s funeral with her sister and his best friend. His stomach twists a little, but he knows better than to let it show in front of these two. Besides, he’s got a little girl upstairs who doesn’t seem to mind if he buries his nose in her neck and swallows down all this bile every so often.

Jack smiles her most dangerous smile. “Honey, you haven’t even seen the start of it.” She looks over to Jim and her mouth drops open. “Jim, you idiot, what the hell’re you doing to that tomato?”

“Why does everyone from Georgia think I’m an asshole?” Jim complains, as Jack takes over to show him how to do it. Sunlight coming in from the window warms the cool room to a deep gold, the summer citrus walls and real wood cabinets Jos had insisted upon practically glowing.

“Because you are,” Jack says severely, surveying the mangled chunks on the board. “Honest to God, Jim, no wonder, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

“Shut up.” Jim scowls at her.

“I’m going to go sit with the baby,” McCoy says, when the monitor in the kitchen emits a wail. “Are you two going to be okay down here, or should I put the fire department on alert?”

“We’ll be fine,” Jack says, whisking the sauce (or whatever it is) in her pan. “I need some time with Mr. Kirk here to get the lowdown on your fancy Starfleet life anyway.”

“Great,” McCoy says, “and don’t forget the part about Jim breaking my comfortable tedium with startling displays of idiocy and sexual incompetence.”

Jim’s still protesting the _incompetence_ bit when McCoy gets to the stairs.

*

Jim and Leonard take John Willis suit shopping that evening. They go to a menswear store Leonard remembers from his days as Jocelyn’s date to many Law Society of Georgia dinners; the assistants are helpful, the suits are subdued, and they sell shoes, making it perfect for men who hate to shop (this includes all men but Jim, so far as McCoy can make out, but Jim loves shopping because he can hit on the salespeople and prance around in new clothes).

John’s a quiet man, and tonight he’s quieter than normal. “What do you think of this one, sir?” Jim asks him, strangely polite – at least, McCoy thinks it’s strange until he realizes that this _yes, sir, no, sir_ bit is Jim’s way of being respectful.

“Son,” John says, after staring at the suit for a full thirty seconds, “if it fits, I don’t fuckin’ care.”

So he tries it on, and they kept Leonard’s measurements on file, so they focus on finding Jim a suit. For the first time in Leonard’s acquaintance with Jim, this does not take two hours and endless agonizing. Jim only tries on three, and settles for something that Leonard knows is going to a tailor the minute they return to the Academy. As they leave, Leonard claps a hand on John’s shoulder awkwardly, trying to be comforting.

“Len,” John sighs. “I always knew I’d have to find a suit when someone died. Didn’t care; hated wearin’ the damn things to all those meetings when I was workin’ at the firm. Just - didn’t think it’d be for Josie.”

Leonard’s throat contracts, and he looks down so that he doesn’t have to look at the lost, confused grief in John Willis’s eyes. “None of us did, sir,” he says, and that’s the end of their deep emotional conversation about the daughter John loved more than anything, and the wife who fought tooth and claw to kick Leonard out of his life here.

*

After the will has been read, McCoy steps outside for some air to fill his burning lungs, and sits on the porch steps alone for a long time, watching the sun rise higher in the impossible blue sky. With it, the mercury rises, steaming the dew from the grass into humidity that pools sweat at the small of his back.

Eventually, Jim comes out and sits next to him.

“Christ, Jim,” he says, “she left me the house.”

“What a bitch,” Jim says, deadpan, looking out at the manicured lawn, the tall trees that keep them shielded from nosy neighbours.

McCoy’s quiet for along time, and Jim just lets him sit with his elbows on his knees, trying to figure all of this out. “I don’t have a goddamn clue what I’m doing,” he says finally, roughly, and to his surprise Jim slings an arm around his shoulders. “I have a house and a baby and I’m fucking clueless, Jim.”

“No way,” Jim says, all that Kirk arrogance coming out at simple faith. God, it would be nice to believe in his own competence the way Jim does, like it’s a fact of life. Not this bare, scrabbled-for existence, cobbled together and abruptly undone. “Bones, you’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna be _awesome_.”

“You know what’s completely fucked up about this, Jim? Josie would’ve been a _great_ mom. She was great with kids, loved ‘em. Never talked down to ‘em or coddled ‘em, just treated them like they were a fact of the universe. And here I am, and I’m two seconds away from bolting, because there is no way I’m gonna be able to be that.”

Jim shakes his head. “Don’t be an asshole, Bones. Of course you are.”

But all he can do is turn to give Jim that look, the one that calls him on his bullshit. “How the hell do you know, Jim? I can barely handle feeding the kid.”

But Jim’s not deterred, because he’s never deterred. “Bones,” he says, “you’re my best friend, and I know you. You’re gonna be a great dad, like you’re a great doctor. Jo’s lucky to have you.” The arm around him tightens. “And, obviously, she’ll have her awesome Uncle Jim around to help her out if you ever need a break.”

This – Jim Kirk anywhere _near_ his daughter, especially in the ill-defined future where she has sex questions and school questions and driving questions – should not be comforting, but somehow the knot in McCoy’s stomach unties itself a little bit. Instead of saying thank you, he snorts, and they sit there together for a while longer, until Jack calls them in to make lunch.


	2. Chapter 2

_Two._

 _The ecstasy, the being free, the big black cloud over you and me  
And after that, the upwards fall, and were we angels after all?_  
Stars, The Night Starts Here

They hold the wake the next day. Leonard suffers through it only because Jack is there, and Jack’s only there because her parents are, and everyone else comes for the food and the gossip and, occasionally, to say goodbye. Jocelyn’s boss from the District Attorney’s Office seems mostly upset that he’s lost his hardest-working underling before she came back from maternity leave. The women from the club make subtle inquiries as to whether Josie really did have that nose job, which she didn’t, and her best friend from college sniffles and glares at McCoy and asks about the will.

It’s not over until eleven o’clock at night, and Joanna’s the only one of them who’s managed to get through the day unscathed. He’d put her down at eight, and nobody’s heard a peep from her since, which makes him nervous, checking on her breathing on the monitor every ten minutes. Even Jim is a little bit tense, and Jeri and John both have a shell-shocked air about them, which Jeri lets out as nervous cleaning energy. She’s always been a very tidy woman, and the mess of the day, recyclable plates and cups and half-empty platters, seems to appeal to her. The entire house is ablaze with light in a way that Leonard’s always hated. He’s the one who insisted on table lamps in every room, something a little less in your face than track lighting from the ceiling.

When everyone’s left into the muggy night, Jeri shoves a bottle of whiskey into his hands and herds him and Jack out of the kitchen. “You two,” she says, “are no good to anyone tonight, so my suggestion is that you take that handsome young man of yours and get very drunk. I’ll sit with the baby – don’t you look like that at me, Leonard McCoy. I’ll do my own drinkin’ in my own time. Right now what I’d really like to do is scrub this kitchen down, and all y’all are in my way, so get the hell out.”

Jack smiles tearfully at her mother, the first time she’s come even close to crying all day. “Thanks, Mama,” she says, leaning forward to kiss her mother’s cheek. And then she’s pulling McCoy forward and beckoning Jim to come with the other hand, and that’s how they end up doing shots of good whiskey on Leonard’s marriage bed at midnight a week after his ex-wife dies.

“If this were a certain kind of book,” Jack says, leaning back against the headboard that McCoy remembers picking out at a furniture store two weeks after the wedding, “we’d have a lot of sex right about now.”

Jim snickers, and McCoy kicks him. Hard. “Ow,” Jim whines, “what’d you do that for?” He’s pressed up drunkenly against McCoy’s torso; lots of men are ebullient drunks or angry drunks or sleepy drunks, but Jim just gets needy and tactile.

“You can’t sleep with my sister-in-law,” McCoy says in his sternest voice, and then considers this. “And _I_ definitely cannot sleep with my sister-in-law.”

“Nobody can sleep with your sister-in-law except her boyfriend,” Jack agrees, “and he’s – “ she hiccups – “doing very important work on Tau IV right now. Clearing landmines. Waiting for Starfleet to get off their asses and deliver the fucking food aid they promised ten _months_ ago – “

“Don’t look at me when you say that,” Jim says defensively, “it’s not my fault.”

“Are you _part_ of Starfleet?” Jack makes a face at him. “Ugh. Fucking Starfleet HA bureaucracy. Like, it’s their fucking _job_ to deliver these supplies, and it takes them months to requisition the right ones and deliver them and they don’t even _help_ with disbursement and then sometimes they’ve forgotten something simple like fucking potable _water_ or _water filters_ – “

McCoy thinks she probably could’ve kept going if she hadn’t fallen off the bed just then.

Jim starts laughing into McCoy’s shoulder.

“Shut up,” Jack says from the floor, and clumsily climbs back onto the bed. “See, Josie would never have done that. Fallen off the fucking bed.”

“No,” Leonard agrees, “but she’d probably have pushed someone off by now.”

“What a bitch.” Jack nods, grimacing into her glass, and holding it out for a refill. “Mom and Dad just couldn’t fuckin’ handle me after having her. She was a genius at doing things right. I _hate_ her for that.” Tears well up in Jack’s eyes. “She was married to you, and you were such an asshole genius too, which everyone thought was what she needed, until she decided she’d rather be just a _lonely_ asshole, and you two goddamn fucking assholes made this place a nuclear disaster zone.”

“And then she went and got pregnant,” McCoy adds, rather than disputing any of this. He has to refill his own glass again. Jim just watches them in boneless fascination, the lightweight.

“And she got _pregnant_ ,” Jack says, her voice cracking. “You made a baby and she didn’t even fucking tell you. What kind of fucking person does that? Just because she wanted her goddamn revenge or independence or what the fuck ever. I’d slap her in the face if she were here now.”

“Like that Easter,” McCoy reminds her, staring at the ceiling so he doesn’t have to watch her wipe her eyes. “When the two of you got into it over the new Federation president. What was that, two years ago?”

“Yeah,” Jack sniffles, “and you _agreed_ with me, which pissed her off so bad. She practically went for me with a turkey bone. But that guy’s a total fascist douchebag, and if he hadn’t gone to Harvard Law like she did, she’d’ve thought so too. Hypocritical fucking _bitch_.” She’s crying in earnest now, but angrily, like she can’t even believe she’s doing it. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you about Jo. I mean, Jo’s yours, and you’re so fucking good with her.”

“He’s great with her,” Jim slurs loyally. “Like, like a baby doctor or something. He _knows things_.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice with infants this year,” McCoy tells Jim, rolling his eyes and ruffling his hair affectionately. Jim grins.

“You love me,” he retorts, leaning up to give McCoy a loud kiss on the cheek. “You totally do.”

Somehow Jim’s wrapped himself around McCoy in a way that prevents pushing him off. “You’re tolerable, for an arrogant, sloppy asshole with a superiority complex and too much time on his hands,” McCoy tells him dryly, wiping his cheek.

Jack sniffs loudly, watching them. “God, we’re all assholes. Maybe that’s the secret of life. _Everyone is an asshole_.”

“Everyone good, anyway,” Jim puts in.

“That would make Josie the best,” Jack says, and she looks at McCoy, and suddenly they just start laughing half-hysterically, so that Jack nearly falls off the bed again and McCoy almost doubles over, instead burying his face in Jim’s hair. It’s a long time before he can stop, stomach aching.

They all settle back into the five-hundred threadcount sheets, made from real cotton, not the replicated kind, and coloured intricately in a pattern called Chika Hothouse. “Man,” Jim says thoughtfully after the silence has stretched on a long time, each of them lost in their own inebriation. “You guys really loved her, huh?”

“For all the fuckin’ good it did us,” Jack says. “And with long periods of hating her in between. Thought Lenny here was gonna shiv her during the divorce.”

“Fuck it,” he says, “the woman pared me down to the bone with a goddamn carving knife, but I sat across from her at the breakfast table for five years, and you can’t hate someone after that.”

This time it’s Jim and Jack who share a look, and the two of them who start laughing again, Jim snorting into McCoy’s clavicle. McCoy juts his jaw out and forebears to ignore them. “Bones,” Jim says finally, still giggling a little, “that was _poetic_.”

McCoy absorbs this, then cuffs Jim upside the head, not particularly gently. “Fuck you,” he says.

There is a silence during which Jim closes his eyes and passes out abruptly into McCoy’s lap.

“Aw,” Jack says. “There’s romance for you, Len.”

“Shut up,” Leonard tells her, trying to extract himself from Kirk’s iron embrace. “He’s a dumbass kid.”

Jack attempts to look wise and all-knowing. “Right,” she says, “the dumbass kid who flew three thousand miles to hang out at your dead ex-wife’s house and change diapers with you.”

“You’re an idiot. So’s he. Maybe you _should_ sleep together.”

“Oh, Len, he’s not my type. All that sunshine and energy. But maybe energy’s just what you need.” She winks lasciviously at him, and then starts laughing at her own joke, snorting a little bit. Very attractive.

Fortunately, McCoy thinks blurrily, pouring himself another drink and obliging Jack when she holds out her glass, none of them are going to remember much in the morning.

*

McCoy wakes up with a dry mouth, a heaving stomach, and a crick in his neck. He lies there, swallowing convulsively, for a few minutes, before he’s able to prop himself up on an elbow and make sure he’s alone. God only knows where Jim’s got to, and Jack’s sprawled out on the floor, snoring, with a whiskey-stained Chika Hothouse sheet pulled over her shoulders.

He drags himself to the ensuite bathroom – filled with all of Jack’s crap, which reminds him of Jocelyn’s crap, which makes him feel like an intruder – and splashes at his face with cold water until he feels somewhat more human. Brushing his teeth also helps. It’s only then that he can face going downstairs and scrounging for leftover crackers and ten liters of water.

Jim’s there, with Joanna in his arms, pacing the kitchen. “Morning,” he says cheerily. How he’s feeling fine this morning is a mystery for the ages, because Leonard feels like he’s been hit by a truck. “Jeri went out to pick up some food. Apparently I look trustworthy. You wanna hold her?”

McCoy waves him off; Jim Kirk in this mood is definitely less likely to drop Joanna than a hungover Leonard McCoy. “I should take pictures,” he says dryly, finding himself a glass of water. “I’m sure I could start a whole little cottage industry setting Academy ovaries on fire.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “Don’t you listen to your mean old dad,” he says to Joanna, “he’s just crabby this morning because he drank too much last night. It always makes him a total jerk.” She makes a comfortable baby noise, resting in his arms. “Your kid’s gonna be a heartbreaker,” Jim tells him.

“I don’t want to think about that,” McCoy says, rubbing one eye. “I can barely think two days ahead right now. Little boys come under the category of _much, much later_.”

“Aw, come on. You two are gonna be fine. You’re already her favourite person in the world. Isn’t he, huh, Jo?” The way Jim talks to the baby is both nauseating and fascinating. Or maybe it’s the hangover that’s making him want to purge his stomach of its paltry contents and lining. “Besides, it can’t be that hard to raise a kid. Our parents did, and look how we turned out!”

McCoy sits at the antique twenty-second century table, slumping over his water. “I thought you were trying to cheer me up,” he mutters ungratefully. Jim grins at him, shifting Jo from one arm to the other. “So,” he says, “what did you tell Starfleet about missing the start of the summer semester?”

“Oh,” Jim says, “I told them you needed moral support out here. They looked really uncomfortable, but they approved my leave. I think they thought we were dating.”

Which makes McCoy choke on his water. Sputtering, he says, “What made them think that?”

“Oh,” Jim says airily, “I guess I probably said something to imply we were.”

“Such _as_?”

This is when Jeri interrupts them with doughnuts and coffee, leaving Jim looking much too relieved. McCoy’s still staring at Kirk suspiciously when she calls Jack and they all settle around the box, grabbing steaming cups and paper napkins.

“Jesus, Leonard,” Jeri says, breaking the silence, “you smell like a brewery.”

*

By one in the afternoon, it’s clear that Joanna won’t sleep and won’t eat and doesn’t seem interested in doing anything but trying out her lungs. All day. Even though all of them take a turn rocking her and pushing her around the block and changing her and doing all the things you do for babies when they cry, nothing works until she exhausts herself. By five o’clock, Leonard’s hangover has turned into a migraine and his vision is bordering on blurry, but Joanna’s sleeping fitfully in her crib, with her grandmother reading a dissertation close by.

Showered, shaved, and wearing his favourite Academy sweats (meaning the ones the most worn in), he lets himself sink into the couch in the living room with a glass of fresh orange juice and a couple of oral analgesics. Jim wanders after him, and McCoy wonders briefly if Jim knows how badly they’ve needed him here, just for his newness, not even for his occasional utility in calming people down. Coming back here is like stepping into the past, and although it hasn’t been that long, it seems like years since he and Jos were having their first Christmas dinner here, or hosting a barbeque on one of the new solar-powered grills that’s sitting under a dust cover in the backyard.

He knows it’s not just him; Jack sometimes looks like she’s seeing ghostly imprints as well, when she smells woodsmoke from the neighbours’ fire pit or hears her mother calling from upstairs. That’s the bitch about death, more than missing someone’s company or grieving the loss to the world: You start remembering all those things you’d conveniently forgotten while they were alive. Jeri and John aren’t around and vulnerable enough to see it, but even Jeri gets lost looking into Joanna’s eyes, sometimes.

“Are you brooding?” Jim asks, sprawling on the couch next to him. “I think you should know that people don’t _actually_ like that. It’s not very attractive.”

McCoy rolls his eyes. “And here I was worrying I wasn’t attractive enough for you, Jim.” Somehow this doesn’t hit where he expects it to; Jim just smiles, picks up a magazine from the coffee table and pretends to be interested in the politics of the Law Society’s recent executive board elections.

Sitting there, drinking juice, it strikes him how awful this would be if Jim weren’t across from him, making faces at pictures of lawyers and comically flipping through to see if there’s a centerfold. McCoy can just roll his eyes and call him an idiot and let a little of the tension in his shoulders bleed out. What it really comes down to is this: Jim keeps him in the present, and he’s pathetically grateful for it.

*

Two in the morning, rocking Joanna back to sleep; the last thing McCoy expects is for Jim to slip into the nursery. “Hey,” Jim says quietly, looking sleepy and mussed, wearing one of Leonard’s t-shirts and a pair of Leonard’s sweatpants. They’re too big on him, and he looks slightly ridiculous. How Jim got so far in life stealing other people’s things is a question McCoy’s been gnawing on since he found Jim using his toothbrush in the second week of their acquaintance.

“I think she misses Jos,” McCoy says finally, almost under his breath, the thing they’ve all been trying to avoid saying. “Sometimes she just won’t settle.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.” Jim flashes a grin at him, and McCoy doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes. Cheeky brat.

“She’s been a trooper this week,” McCoy says, stroking one finger down her chubby round face. “Can’t blame her for not sleepin’.” In fact, it gives him an excuse to indulge his new friend insomnia, who talks to him about nannies and space duty and the future for hours and hours on end.

“Yeah,” Jim agrees, sitting back in the other chair. McCoy knows better than to ask him what the hell he’s doing there at two in the morning. Jim has a habit of showing up and sticking around at odd hours. Actually, this habit is actually a post-cursor to his much more annoying habit of climbing into McCoy’s dorm room through the window at odd hours, usually forgetting that McCoy’s bed is below the window and he is usually _asleep_ at four AM, God willing.

“What’re you doin’ up, anyway?”

“Can’t sleep. I was going through some of my old Xenolinguistics notes. There’s an annual meeting next month. I’m running for treasurer.” He flashes a white smile at Bones, who rolls his eyes and bounces Joanna a little, trying to soothe her to sleep. He doesn’t like leaving her awake and alone, even when she’s not crying, because it usually leads to crying, and the sound of that is already threatening to undo him completely. He can’t imagine what his life is going to be like after another week of it. Your heart can’t take that kind of stress. He knows. He’s a doctor.

“Just because you _can_ bug Uhura doesn’t mean you _have_ to.”

“Yeah, but I love making that little vein pop out on her forehead.” Jim grins, at his blondest, and McCoy can’t help but snort, half-amused despite himself. “Besides, I’ve gotta get something extracurricular on my record. Pike’s been on my ass.”

“That’s what you get for attracting a captain’s attention,” McCoy tells him unsympathetically. “You actually have to do something with your godforsaken hyperactive brain now.”

Jim doesn’t reply, just tilts his head to one side, looking at McCoy with an expression that inexplicably makes him flush. Nervous, he looks down at Joanna, but Jim’s still looking – _staring_ – when he looks back up. Eventually, Jim runs a hand through his hair and stands up, and McCoy thinks with relief that this awkward moment’s going to come to a close. Honest to Christ, this kid sometimes drives him crazy.

“Bones,” Jim says instead, moving closer to McCoy with a kind of brutal gentleness, “I’m going to kiss you now.” And he does, before Leonard can even think about it, keeping a careful hand on Jo and putting the other on Leonard’s neck and pressing their mouths together. It’s an altogether different kind of kiss than he would ever expect of Jim: No tongue, no teeth, just Jim’s nose brushing against his own and Jim’s rough chin scratching his and Jim, smelling like citrus fruit and soap. Jim, who’s kissing him, who he’s kissing back, who’s here, in his ex-wife’s ex-house, leaning over his daughter to suck a little bit on his bottom lip.

“Jim,” he says, heart racing, as Jim pulls away; he can feel it in his throat, pumping hard, and the world has narrowed to this dimly lit face. “What.” And that’s all he can get out. Jim looks at him, and smiles.

“I was trying to give us a better build-up,” he says, straightening without a hint of self-consciousness. “You know, so you’d forget about the whole Tellurian clap thing and maybe about one or two other incidents that probably we don’t need to go over. I mean, we were supposed to have a couple of years. But then all this happened, and, well. Man’s gotta man up.”

Leonard is so confused.

“Anyway,” Jim continues, like none of this should be, you know, a goddamn _surprise_ or anything, “you overthink this here for a while, and I’m gonna go and steal the good couch. But remember: I’ve got your number, McCoy.”

Joanna whimpers unhappily in his arms as Jim leaves. Leonard gets it, that deep, unhappy discomfort. “Me too,” he murmurs to her, and the sound of his voice seems to calm her down a little bit.

That bitch Jocelyn’s managed to turn his life upside down not once, but twice; and not only that, but she’s done it posthumously, which has to be some kind of fucking witch woman voodoo magic. He’s sure that eventually, they’re going to find a box in the attic marked ‘LEONARD’ in her pretty block print, and inside the box will be dozens of little cloth dolls with scowls and floppy hair, stuck through with dozens of tiny, precise pins.

“Damn it, Jim,” he mutters finally, and Joanna makes a sleepy noise that he thinks is probably agreement.

*

McCoy wakes in the same chair to see Jack gently lifting Jo out of his arms and tucking her into the crib. “You’re gonna give yourself some kind of back condition,” she whispers, and he realizes with a start that it’s light out, grey dawn streaming in through the curtains.

He follows her out and down the stairs, assuming that if she’s awake, there is coffee. True to form, the pot’s half-full and steaming on the kitchen island. He pours himself a cup, stirs in too much artificial sweetener, and closes his eyes; she might be a pain in the ass, but she’s a morning person, and her taste in coffee runs to strong and black.

“So,” she says, tilting her head at him, “you’re quiet this mornin’.” With her dark hair loose in curls around her face and her shoulders wrapped in an old crocheted afghan that usually lives on the back of a chair in Josie’s office, she looks pale and sleep-deprived.

He sighs, so damn tired he can’t even bring his voice up past a growl. “That idiot Jim kissed me.”

She doesn’t have the decency to look shocked. “Took him long enough,” she comments through a yawn. He glares at her. “Len, seriously, that kid is infatuated with you. _Dad_ noticed, and all he’s noticin’ right now is how damn bad he feels.”

“He is not,” McCoy disagrees. “He’s a sex addict with attachment issues.”

“Oh, yeah. That explains why he’s been up at all hours helpin’ with your kid, packin’ your ex-wife’s crap in boxes, organizin’ her damn wake because sometimes you just sit and stare at your damn hands. It’s not an attachment _issue_ when it’s actual _attachment_ , dumbass.”

McCoy can only blink at her. “You’ve known him for a _week_ ,” he finally says accusatorily, though it sounds pretty damn feeble even to him.

“Oh, honey, I knew when you didn’t yell at him for eatin’ off your plate at lunch the first day. You _hate_ that.” And it’s true, he does hate that, but there are only so many times in a day you can yell at Jim, and he’s learned to pick his battles. That doesn’t mean – it’s not like that means it’s love. Or – whatever.

He shakes his head.

“Oh, Lenny.” Jack looks sad, all of a sudden. “You know we’ve all gotta go back to our lives soon. I got Gene up on that hellhole of a warzone, Mom’s got Dad, Jo’s got you, and you’ve got that annoying kid who insists on eating godawful chocolate marshmallow cereal and leavin’ the seat up. That’s the way it is; just tell your brain to get out of the damn way.”

McCoy is silent. This is the moment he realizes that the last six months of his life have been Jim Kirk’s crazy, bizarro-world version of _dating_ , and he can’t help the chill that sinks into his spine.

“I,” he tries to say, but he can’t see to make his vocal cords work, something choking them off. Finally, he sighs, because he senses that he’s acting like a little girl, and Leonard Horatio McCoy doesn't _do_ adolescent angst. “So what you’re saying is that you think Jim’s a good bet,” he says defeatedly.

“If you’re not too much of an asshole about it.” She smiles at him, gently knocks him on the shoulder. “Idiot.” She pauses. “Did you seriously never think about it before? I mean, Len. Come on. You’re divorced, not dead.” Before McCoy can even absorb this, Jack gives him a knowing smirk and leaves him to find his own breakfast.

*

Jim finds him later, on his fifth cup of coffee, sitting out under the tall elms. The leaves are not quite full, so they filter the midmorning sun into pure green gold. Jos kept the outdoor furniture in the same place, under the trees, a place where they used to sit and read on Sunday afternoons; Jos kicked back with a trashy romance, Leonard with a mystery novel, their feet in one another’s laps. Her hair, always pulled back with a headband or a scarf.

“I can’t wait to get the fuck out of this house,” he says to Jim, watching the steam from his coffee dissipate into the air.

Jim slides into Jos’s old chair, unknowing, and takes it over, rubbing out the ghost impressions in McCoy’s head. Just for that, McCoy would like him if he didn’t already. For the way he shrugs and runs a hand through his hair in the sunlight, how he touches some kind of nerve in McCoy’s brainstem that pushes through the sludge of memory – well, McCoy feels something different about that.

“So, uh,” Jim says, and McCoy has to look up at him. Jim’s just grinning self-deprecatingly, but there’s something a little bit timid about it for all his blustery confidence. “I think I’m kind of fucked up over you, man. I had this whole five-year plan. I was gonna take you to shitty bars and make you drink beer, and pretend to be too wasted to get to my own room, so you’d get used to waking up next to me. There was a whole – “ he waves his hands – “ _flowchart_ for how I was gonna go about this.”

McCoy has to laugh. “You’re a Machiavellian little asshole, aren’t you,” he says, turning his coffee mug in his fingers.

“Machiavelli was all about the _people_ , Bones, that’s practically a compliment.” Never underestimate what Jim Kirk’s read under his covers at night. “Anyway, what I want to say is that I may, possibly, have miscalculated. Slightly. As to the status of my plan. In my defense, circumstances changed kinda rapidly.”

“Tell me about it.” McCoy leans back, looks up at the foliage, takes a sip of cooling coffee. He looks back down, over to Jim, meeting his eyes. “But, you know, you’re not so bad. For a dumbass farmboy know-it-all asshole, anyway.”

Jim’s grin is slow, elicited, the result of gradual comprehension instead of calculation. And, to his credit, he doesn’t push it yet, just lets the new reality sink in over the old garden chairs and the trees he remembers shorter and the grass they pay an enterprising neighborhood kid to keep trimmed.

“Jo smiled at me today,” Jim tells him, leaning back himself, relaxing.

McCoy rolls his eyes. “It was probably gas.”

“Nah; she likes me. I can tell. I mean, she still screams if I hold her too long, but, you know.” Jim winks. “I have a way with McCoys.”

He just rolls his eyes and sits quietly, companionably, while he reconciles the spirit-shadows of the past with the bright, sharp realities of now. Eventually, Jim pulls him down to sit on the grass by the roots of the tree, and he closes his eyes and leans on a broad shoulder, letting possibility sow a little seed right here, where his possibility had begun and ended once before.


	3. Chapter 3

_Coda._

 _love is a place  
& through this place of  
love move  
(with brightness of peace)  
all places_  
\--e.e. cummings

 

The sand here is pink, a bright contrast to the dark waters – still cool, they are meant to understand, and not quite comfortable for humans wishing to swim. On the horizon, a fat, glowing moon is setting, but the sun is noon-high and hot.

“I love shore leave,” Kirk says, sliding his expensive sunglasses up his nose and leaning back on his elbows. “Especially when it actually involves a shore. C’mon. You wouldn’t be doing this at Deep Space Four.” He bumps McCoy with his hip, sliding a little closer in the process.

“My blood pressure would be lower,” McCoy says dryly. “I would sleep more. I – Jo!” he shouts, sitting up. “You stay away from that water!”

“Is okay, doctor!” the blonde kid from Navigation calls, from the place where the waves lap gently at the shore. “I haf her, we are fine!” He and Jo both are little more than blurs, running after a frisbee or something. McCoy narrows his eyes, trying to follow them, anticipating danger every time she takes a step.

“Let Chekov work off his debt, Bones,” Jim says, pulling an unwilling Leonard back down. “Teach him to play poker with the big boys.”

“I don’t usually hire babysitters based on the extent of their debt to you,” McCoy grumbles, keeping an eye on them. “Actually, that’s probably the worst way I could _possibly_ choose them.”

“Aw,” Jim says, “you know the kid’s great with her. Reminds him of the little Russian geniuses back home.”

“That _still_ doesn’t excuse teaching her how to jimmy the doorlock program,” McCoy mutters, and Jim laughs, pressing his nose into McCoy’s shoulder. “You spoil her.”

“I do not,” Jim says indignantly, which is a patent and obvious lie. The captain’s affection for all nine of the kids aboard is a relief to the parents in the family berths pilot study, but he always saves extra ice cream for Jo McCoy, and everyone knows it. “By the way, I like your hat. Very Georgia. Hope you got the back of your neck with that SPF ninety.”

“Fuck you,” McCoy says, pulling the straw brim down stubbornly. “I burn. You look like an asshole, by the way.”

Jim just grins and pulls him over and kisses him, long and slow and gentle. “I look awesome,” he says into McCoy’s mouth. “You’re just crabby because that’s the way you are.” Kissing his nose, he pulls back a little bit, finally settling back against McCoy with a smug and proprietary air.

“I’m not a pillow, Jim,” Leonard grumbles, but it’s mostly for form, because he shifts to accommodate the extra weight. They bask in the sun – McCoy in a t-shirt, Jim bare-chested, the goddamn peacock – for a while, letting the heat lull them into half-sleep.

Eventually, Chekov tires Jo out, and she crawls up between them sleepily, burrowing herself a convenient hollow. Jim brings up a fond hand to rest in her baby-fine dark hair, settling contentedly around her and falling back asleep. Jim can sleep anywhere, a product of his misspent youth.

“Dad,” she murmurs, wriggling up so that they’re eye to eye – almost. More like his nose to her eye, but close enough. “I like shore leave.” It’s not her first, but it is the first where they’ve both been able to go down, and there’s been actual nature, not the virtual games and sticky consumerism McCoy hates exposing her to.

“Your mom and I went to the beach a couple times,” he tells her, and she puts her head on his shoulder. “Different beaches, even.”

“Was it pink sand?” she asks, letting Jim adjust so that he’s on his stomach, with an arm that goes across her and onto Leonard’s ribs. Lazy bastard.

“Nope,” he says, “it was white. In a place on Earth called Mexico. We went right after we got married. The water was bluer.”

“Pretty,” she says, yawning. “Did Mom like it?”

“Not really,” he admits, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a smile. “She didn’t like sand too much. Said it got everywhere.”

“I like it,” Jo says definitely. “Mr. Chekov made me a sand castle. Only, it was kind of just a block. I showed him how castles are s’posed to be. Towers. And mermaids. And lizards.”

“Russian architecture,” McCoy mumbles under his breath, amused. Then he pauses. “Lizards?”

“Like those ones Jim found on that planet. They’re the guards.” And she continues, spinning a sprawling, half-nonsense fairy story in his ear. The ocean sounds in the distance are calming, steady. “Did Mommy like castles?” she demands finally, once the princess has married an appropriately brave Starfleet science officer and taken control of her own starship.

“Oh, yeah,” McCoy says, stifling a yawn, although really he doesn’t think they ever had the _Castles: Pro or con?_ conversation. “Loved ‘em, babydoll. Especially the trees.”

Jo settles against him, deceptively quiet; he knows in half an hour she’ll be hyperactive again, but for now he just lets her clean, ocean-salty scent wash over him. Every time he thinks that Jos nearly took this from him, his stomach twists with rage, but then he remembers that Jos will never have any of it, and feels pity, even gratitude, because it was Jos who began the unfortunate confluence of events that gave him an impossible little girl who wants to be Jim when she grows up.

(What she doesn’t know is that this is not allowed.)

“Love you,” she murmurs in his ear. Normally she is fair about this, and makes Jim wake up so that she can say it to him, too (even if Jim has just come off gamma shift and is as close to comatose as he comes without an away mission getting in the way). Today, she just sighs happily and gives him a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Love you, too,” he tells her seriously, and kisses her nose. She wrinkles it and giggles, and closes her eyes, perfectly content.

McCoy gets that, because in this moment, he is, too.


End file.
